2 hours ago

Trump administration to announce dismantling of much of Education Dept.

The Education Department plans to announce Tuesday that it will move multiple parts of the agency to other federal departments, an unprecedented and unilateral effort to dismantle an agency created by Congress to ensure all Americans have equal access to educational opportunity and better coordinate federal programs.

The move was described by three people informed of the plan ahead of the announcement. Two of these people said six offices within the department would be shifted elsewhere; the third person said it was at least two.

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to close the department and asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon to work with Congress to do so. The agency, which was created in 1979, has long been derided by conservatives as unnecessary and ineffective. But Congress has not acted on or seriously considered Trump’s request.

McMahon has acknowledged that only Congress can eliminate the department but vowed to do everything in her power to dismantle it from within.

Asked for comment, an Education Department spokeswoman suggested some information provided to The Post about the plan was inaccurate, but did not offer specifics.

Supporters of the department say that the agency is effective in coordinating multiple aspects of education in one place and keeping priorities important to students, parents and schools high on the federal agenda.

Offices that could be moved out of the agency include the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates allegations of discrimination on the basis of race, sex and disability; the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which administers the $15 billion Individuals with Disabilities Act program; and the Indian Education program; the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers K-12 grant programs; and the Office of Postsecondary Education.

Federal law directs that these programs be housed in the Education Department. The Trump administration is employing a work-around, the people briefed on the matter said, whereby other government agencies would run the Education programs under a contract with the Education Department. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the changes.

The Trump administration laid the groundwork for this change earlier this year when it signed an agreement to move career, technical and adult education grants out of the Education Department to the Labor Department. Under the arrangement, Education retains oversight and leadership while managing the programs alongside Labor, a way of sidestepping the federal statute.

“We believe that other department functions would benefit from similar collaborations,” McMahon wrote in an op-ed essay published Monday in USA Today.

More broadly, McMahon has argued that the recently ended government shutdown showed how unnecessary her agency is.

“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes,” she wrote. “The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.”